Backing Up Outlook 2010 Files

[Barmaid]

I had a catastrophic loss of data this morning when my .pst file got corrupted (I was trying to add another email account which failed and THEN totally trashed my existing email on Outlook, so I had to recreate my email profile and it overwrote my old data files). I lost about 20,000 emails. After nearly crying for an hour, thankfully, quick thinking saved them by doing a Registry Restore.

I need to ensure that in future I do not lose anything (say for example, if my lappy gets nicked or I experience another loss of data), how can I backup these email files, please? I have an external hard drive I can use, I just do not know how to do it.

I am running Windows 7 and Outlook 2010.

Many thanks.

[Buenchico]

Microsoft offers a free dedicated back-up tool for earlier versions of Outlook:
https://support.office.com/en-sg/article/Back-up-Outlook-data-with-the-Microsoft-Outlook-Personal-Folders-Backup-tool-7ef27bac-6088-4f03-a9f7-34165d885883
By default, it doesn't work with Outlook 2010. However if you install it anyway, and then allow Microsoft to fix it, all will be OK:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/kb/2030523

[Barmaid]

Thanks Chris. It appears to have worked. Now to go back to my original task which was adding another account on a Microsoft Exchange server - which is where it ALL went wrong to start with.

So that's one-nil to Microsoft for jiggering up my day.